Tractacus Nano-Sociologicus

The following text was written in the context of the Carbon versus Silicon think tank, gathering artists and scientists at the Banff Centre in 2003. During the conference, I was impressed by the high scientific level of the participants, and I felt embarrassed by my position as an artist, hardly trying to get the big picture. I was just wondering about the legitimacy of most of the graphic representations of the nano world that was for me more interpretations and justifications of theories, as if one would be trying to persuade the audience of the credibility of a desirable fiction.
I decided to do a performance for my conference. The text of my power point presentation should be at the same time and the definition of an art project questioning the scientific and/or aesthetic issues of the emerging nanotechnologies.

Probably because of the complexity of its features, this project has never been done.

Arty-Fiction
Tractacus Nano-Sociologicus

The first step on the atom

Never extension of the body will have been such a reduction in scale.

To experience the limits (Philippe Sollers)

Infra-RealismI use to call infra realism, realism of depths, realism applied to the model, physic, organic, behavioural more than a "photo realism" called
realism of the surface.

Immersive approach:
the Artist (aA) gives an inner view of the nanoWorld

Fusion approach:
the nanoArtist (nA) is necessarily part of the nanoWorld

By existing nanoArtists contribute
to the definition (nThk) of Art (aArt and nArt)

By continually defining Art,
they contribute to increasing our anxiety
and our desire to take a break

In order to give an artistic interpretation
of the human size World (hsW)
the artist (aA = nanoGod : nG),
using the nanoWorld as a medium,
might build a complete society of characters
considered as natives (actually : immigrants, nImm).

The characters of the nanoWorld are effectors,
active immaterial entities.
They don’t need (deserve?) to be represented by avatars.
They exist by the representation they produce.

Actual inhabitants of the nanoWorld,
they acts like filters for the information
coming from the nanoWorld.

The Artist will take any kind of input
(frequency, heat, light, speed, energy, size…)
and convert it into human scale representation (hsRep): colours, shapes, sounds, and tactile objects…